“Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you, it will only burn what you are not.”- Mooji
my 7 weeks in a remote forest homestead and my fire therapy
“In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.” Rumi
I was introduced to the power of fire already 2 weeks before I came to the forest cottage in the Serbian Hills. Back in Berlin, that I was ready to leave for good, I have been burning old letters, diaries, and belongings that were not supposed to be stored or left back. It was strangely liberating. I know now that I have done the right thing. It was stale and dead and it would not give me life and passion but worry, fear and sleepless nights. I burnt everything that I was not any more.
Once I have arrived here in the Serbian Hills, it is my last day today by the way, I started to be occupied with daily fire making as a chore. The first thing we did upon our nightly arrival, was to fire the old wood oven. Ever since I am doing it daily. And not only I am firing it, I´m also getting the wood for it. I was not aware that I was feeding my own rebirth in the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T2iESu-NiHA
The tongues of fire are greedy and quickly turning wood into flames and warmth. While watching it, we feel the alchemy happening, its nurturing our soul. When I arrived, we had a whole shed filled with firewood, but thanks to the oven`s industrious burning, it ran empty quickly. So we had to get new wood from the forest. The whole area here is forest, and everyone heats with fire wood, many people are in the firewood business even. Firewood is an essential part of the local economy. Before the autumn rains have started, lumberjacks were busy with cutting down trees. You could hear the sounds of saws all over the valley for weeks.
Right behind our house our next neighbor was cutting down the trees of the whole hill, dragging them down, cutting the stems into handy pieces and making huge stacks of firewood by the roadside. We are not in the lumberjack business. But we are allowed to collect the leftover stems and branches from the thicket. Its hard work. I have been doing it too. I´m kind of proud about my new accomplishments even. It`s daily work to feed the ravenous oven, nothing is self evidently provided here. I have been creating huge stacks that are quickly getting smaller by the day.
You could righteously say, that this forest gets decimated in lack of other heating possibilities, and as a matter of fact, I have not seen any big old trees around here. This young forest is like a cattle herd, ready to be cut down for consumption. Sad but true, especially as I love old trees.
But back to the element fire.
It is the highest of all elements in my view, the most physically active one. In the vedic tradition there is a god representing it, Agni. Agni regulates life, passion, creativity, the metabolism. Also it stands for destruction, purge and passion. Have I been purging my manifested past with the fires in Berlin, here and now in Serbia, I am getting reborn in the flames of warmth and reinvention. I´m igniting my own fires in this simple rural life. The warmth and vitality of a fire person is best compared with the first strong sun of spring that activates the reproduction and the sex drive in humans and animals, which is the ultimate creative force in life. Fire is seen as a classical symbol of death and rebirth. The most obvious example of fire and rebirth’s marriage in symbolism is the phoenix rising out of the ashes.
I`m rising like a phoenix out of the ashes of my old life. It feels all so new and primal right now. The mystical bird dies in the flames in which it lives and is reborn from its own ashes. The energy never is lost but changes form. Death and rebirth is the eternal cycle of all creation.
“One must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning.”
— Vicent van Gogh
